Megan, thanks for your response.
You're right, the picture of something on the track is thin evidence. As I mention in the document, I try to do as little violence as possible to the official reports. I accept the reports up to the point that they are clearly wrong, and then I set that error (and that error only) aside. The ALPA report said that everything beyond engine four was finely shredded, so there cannot have been any large wing part left on the track. In the 2015_Image_03 picture there are some small fragments in the near distance, beyond and beside the guy standing on the left. These match the description in the ALPA report, but the object in 2014_Image_02 (whatever it is) does not. It's the right order of magnitude, but I can't prove what it is.
The bent railway line is evidence that a mass with sufficient kinetic energy gave it a good whack ie a 2,000 pound engine travelling at some 100+ knots.
Exactly. That's the problem. The ALPA report said that it was the wing and not the number four engine that hit the track, and it was the number four prop that left the scars. If it was the wing, then it was a couple hundred pounds of fuel and aluminum that bent the track. I propose that that's not realistic. It seems that the track damage is likely to be engine four hitting the track or the ballast just short of the track, and it killed its forward momentum and left it lying there.
It's not impossible that engine four left the foreground scar in 2014-Image_05. It's not impossible that engine four parted at that point and went on to hit the track. It seems unlikely, but it's not impossible. The key event is not where engine four parted, but where it ended up. As you say, it looks like it would take an engine to bend the track, an object of about the right size was left there, and the prop scars remain unresolved unless they were from engine three. So the details of engine four are much less important than the remaining wing and the angle that WS 293 presents to us.
The prop scars across the embankment were the source of the speed calculation. This was not a throwaway line, but critical to the investigation. Yet the wing was intact out to WS 293, and it's impossible for prop three to touch the track in a 90 degree bank while the wing remains intact to WS 293. This is the strongest single piece of evidence for the shallow bank. You simply can't draw a line through WS 293 and prop 3 that is at 90 degrees to the horizontal axis.
You're right that the angle could be confirmed by measuring the broken power lines. But they were confident of the 90-degree bank, and laying out and measuring those broken lines would take probably several days and quite an investment. Who would bother, since there was no question? Nothing in either report says that power line measurements confirm the angle.
I agree that it would be best to see all this on the ground. But it's long gone, the area is now covered with warehouses, and all I have are these pictures. This is sort of like a paleontological dig. I'm looking for fossils, but fossils are statistically few and far between, so I'm trying to piece together the lineage using these scattered and blurry data points. That's why I'm hoping this document helps turn up some more old files.
What the crew actually intended, or thought they might accomplish, is the most elusive question. I think there's enough evidence to say this was close to a successful belly landing, but that doesn't mean the crew thought they could make it or even thought it was within the realm of possibility. I'm positive they were doing the best they could; I don't know what they thought the outcome might be.